Published 4:50 pm, Saturday, July 24, 2010

Students learn how to record transactions, produce financial statements and make everything add up. They aren't the kind of course that attract many college-bound valedictorians.

Bittner, in partnership with Dan Deines, a Kansas accounting professor and Glenda Eichman, a Manhattan, Kansas high school teacher are out to change that. They are on a mission to boost the rigor of high school accounting classes and strengthen the pipeline of individuals attracted to the field by developing an Advanced Placement course in accounting.

The effort is already four-years-old. They've developed the curriculum and on a shoe-string budget of grants, have been traveling the country to teach that curriculum to willing teachers. By the end of July, Bittner expects 500 teachers will be trained to teach the pilot course in their respective high schools. That's the easy part.

The hard part will be convincing the College Board they should accept accounting as its first business course. Trevor Packer, vice president of the College Board responsible for the Advanced Placement program, said there are no plans to expand beyond the 30 AP courses currently administered.

"Rather than making heavy investments in creating additional courses, we're more concerned about equity and boosting student readiness for existing courses. That's what our trustees have asked us to focus on," said Packer.

Packer said his staff and resources are fixed on ensuring more African- American, Hispanic and low-income students gain access to and are ready for existing AP courses. Japanese and Chinese were the last two AP courses added, in the 2006-7 school year.

That said, Packer said for any new AP course idea to be brought to the attention of his trustees, there would need a critical mass of high schools that want to offer it, enough colleges that want to give credits for it, and a clear idea of what knowledge and skills students need to learn.

"This one seems to be the furthest along in terms of having been approached in a really thoughtful way," Packer said of accounting. "I admire the approach they are taking. They really are trying to figure out if AP is the right fit for their objectives."

The purpose of AP courses is to introduce high school students to college-level work and reward them with college credit if they score high enough on course-ended examination. Bittner and his colleagues see an AP accounting class as a way to capture bright minds and give high school students an accurate taste of what the profession is all about. There are no AP business courses.

The campaign has Kevin Stocks, president-elect of the American Accounting Association and director of the School of Accounting at Brigham Young University, on its side. "It is a profession and we would like the opportunity to see it taught as such at the high school level so it becomes a viable option for students," said Stock. For too many teenagers today, its a turnoff, Stocks added.

The need for accountants is high and growing, said Patrick J. Flaherty, an economist for the Connecticut Labor Department. "It's weathered the recession very well and it's a profession that's employed in a wide variety of industries from financial services to hospitals to schools to manufacturers, they need accountants," Flaherty said.

The job of an accountant goes beyond filling out someone's income tax form. They also analyze and interpret accounting records to give businesses advice. Statewide there were 21,400 accountants, according to the labor department. By 2016, it's estimated there will be a need for 24,460. The average statewide salary for accountants is $73,820.

A systemic barrier to boosting the supply, said Bittner, who is also a CPA and former high school accounting teacher, is the high school accounting course. "Most accounting course are rooted in recording transactions and producing financial statements as opposed to understanding what the business is doing. There's no thought process behind it," Bittner said of new effort.

Developed with the help of high school and college accounting teachers, the year-long pilot AP course touches on financial accounting, managerial accounting and financial statement analysis. Student learn how to organize numbers and use those numbers to make business decisions. "We get to decision-making processes a lot sooner," said Josh Glock, an accounting teacher from Avon who took a three-day training seminar offered by Bittner, Deines and Eichman. Training has taken place from San Diego to Worchester, Mass. Teachers from Greenwich and Danbury have also been trained.

Glock has taught the subject 15 years. In his new "honors" course this year, he will still cover the basics, but not spend as much time on them. "Instead of turning kids off with months of `debits to the left, credits to the right,' they will get down to why things happen and what decisions can be made to improve a businesses financial positions much sooner," he said.